a mammoth had been dug out of a loamy hill near a brook. According to A\hat we were 

 told, discoveries of remains of mammoths were said to be rather common at the 

 foot of the Sayansk mountains, and even on the south side of the mountains, right down 

 into Mongolia, they were not rare. The ocean accordingly receded already at a time 

 when the climate was at any rate still so cold that such northern species as the mam- 

 moth and the animal societies allied with it were able to occupy the steppes of southern 

 Siberia, and together with tliis animal life there spread a corresponding vegetation of 

 the high North, of which the bulk has now been expelled northwards, into the Tundras 

 of northern Siberia and up into the high mountains, while a remainder may be traced 

 in the above-mentioned species of plants. The tree-roots already mentioned, found by 

 me in the steppe earth, are also remains of a subarctic vegetation in these regions.') 



There are indications in the character of the vegetation here in noi-thern Europe 

 that when the last remains of this arm of the sea, already mentioned, disappeared, and 

 a connection by land was established between the vegetation of Europe and Asia, the 

 climate was no longer markedly arctic, but perhaps more precisely subarticlic, so that 

 the bulk of the plants that were able to invade northern Europe, must properly be 

 classed among the subarctic floral constituents. Unfortunately, Siberia is as yet very 

 little known in point of Quaternary deposits, which is the more regretable from the fact 

 that the knowledge of the conditions here is not uninteresting with respect to Scan- 

 dinavia. 



The fauna here in the Sayansk mountains also exhibits many northerly forms. 

 Above all, the wild reindeer, which, according to the statements of the natives, are sup- 

 posed to have been much more widely distributed in former times, but are now being re- 

 duced. Moreover, there occur here strongly defined northerly species, such as ptar- 

 migans, and also the cmbergoose and many others. These have, indeed, in all proba- 

 bility, experienced a like fate as the arctic and subarctic floral constituent. 



No systematic meteorological observations are recorded from the Yenisei ba- 

 sin. The climate is, as a matter of course, prominently continental, and very severe, the 

 annual middle temperature being doubtless several degrees below zero, so it is very 

 difficult to grow corn, even on the slopes with southern aspects. Sudden changes in 

 the weather are rather frequent, and there is a great difference between the temperatures 



*) While this work was printing, thero hiis appeared a smaller treatise by the fiermaii chief physician and 

 zoologist I)k. Walthku Aunut: Zur Kenntnis der Verbreitung von Planaria alpina Dana (Zoologischer 

 Anzeiger, Bd. L. Nr. % 6. Dezemher 1918), which Is not uninteresting in this connection. 1)h .Aundt, 

 who lived as a physician for the prisoners of war in the Minusinsk district in 1915, has found that the 

 arctic flat-worm Planaria alpina, also occurs in these regions. It is to be found here not only in the 

 forelands of the Sayansk mountains right down into the steppe res'iou, but even in the middle of the 

 steppe area, in the affluents of the issueless salt lake Schira. lying north of Minusinsk, and in several other 

 places it has been found by him. This little flat- worm has, after the works of \V. Voigt, treating of 

 the coimection between its distribution and the glacial epoch, become especially interesting. VoiGT has, 

 as is known, according to the peculiar conditions of distribution of Planaria alpina in Europe, enounced 

 the theory that it is to he considered here as a relict of the glacial epoch, and if this theory of Voigt's 

 is to have universal validity, I)R. Arndt's discovery is considerably interesting. The above-mentioned 

 arctic plants, which I have pointed out in the lowland at an altitude of about 250 m. a. s. 1., on the 

 dry and hot south Siberian steppes about Minusinsk, are not, accordingly, the only survivors here from 

 the glacial period, but are also accompanied by representatives of the arctic fauna once living here. As 

 this little publication of Dh. Ahndt's is seen really to give an excellent support to my view that those 

 plants are genuine glacial relicts, I beg to direct attention to it in this connection. 



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